Communication competence. Models relevant to the

8
 
THE PENNYCOOK MODEL 
 
In 1994, Alastair Pennycook proposed a model 
for outlining/developing the intercultural 
communication competence starting from the 
cultural and political implications of spreading the 
English language worldwide, a model that 
contributed to a post-colonial world with regard to 
the intercultural competence. Once the language 
holds the meaning of 
locus
for “the political 
struggle” to impose the system of values, and 
cultural politics are viewed as 
“struggle over 
different meanings”
[21]
, 
the
 
acquisition of a new 
language (English, in this respect) gets new 
valences. In such a context, school should be 
perceived as a cultural and political arena and not a 
location in which an information corpus is 
transferred from teacher to pupil/student. The 
teacher must engage politically in order to contribute 
to the forming of intercultural communication 
competence whereas curricula have to be designed 
on interest topics, socially relevant for students. 
Teachers, seen as 
“transformative intellectuals”
, 
represent the engine for the Pennycook model that 
promotes a set of approaches within the generous 
area of “critical pedagogy”. Although the model 
does not render a prescriptive list of phases in 
acquiring the intercultural communication 
competence, 
“Pennycook develops the potential
for 
a critical pedagogy to the full since he links 
theconcept of `voice` to `agency` by empowering 
students/speakers of English as a global language 
 
 
into subjects who perform their own representations 
and by understanding a critical pedagogy of English 
as cultural politics”
[22]
.